It takes me at least half and hour per expense claim and most of that time is taken up retyping details from receipts in my hand. It needn't be like this - come, I'll show you the way.

I pay for most of my expenses via a credit card which has it's own number. In addition,
the establishments where I'm paying for goods have a merchant number and the credit card company dishes out an authorisation number to confirm that the payment is good. All of these details are on my receipt. All of these details confirm the place, the time, the date and the value of the transaction - the exact details I need for my expense claim.

I propose an enlightened system by which claims could be made simply via the authorisation code given by the credit card companies. That would populate all the required fields and save considerable time.

[Cash claims would still be processed manually, but it'd still save time overall. I'm also alive to the fact that this could sound ranty and/or like advocacy, but I hope I've presented a problem and a potential solution which someone somewhere may well adopt one day].

Those three numbers don't necessarily list the items that you're claiming for though. They would show that your card was used at that retailer on that date for that amount, but not that you bought a pound of cheese, two fake vaginas and a spatula (fortunately).